Malariotherapy

Malaria is a disease. There are no doubts about that, right? Well, there used to be a time when it was tried to be used as a medicine. It turned out to be a huge success. It was even the reason for a Nobel Prize.

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Let’s set the scene. It’s 1917, and neurosyphilis is causing severe damage. It’s killing thousands, and nobody has a solution. Neurosyphilis is a type of syphilis that spreads to the brain, causing headaches, mental confusion, dementia, and, for a large percentage, eventually death. It is an infection caused by the bacterium, Treponema pallidum. Modern medicine suggests this has a certain weakness: it is sensitive to high temperatures. Nobody knew back in the day, of course.

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Enter Julius Wagner-Jauregg. Being an Austrian psychiatrist, he treated a number of patients with general paresis (a type of madness caused by neurosyphilis) and noticed a strange pattern; those afflicted with some other illness increasingly improved from the general paresis. Furthermore, these illnesses tend to be ones that cause high fevers, like influenza. He then theorized a peculiar hypothesis: inducing high fevers could battle syphilis. Fevers were not the problem; they were the cure.

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Here comes a problem with that. It is not advisable to inject something like influenza into a syphilis patient; it cures syphilis, but then it will proceed to kill the patient. As it’s infamously known, the Spanish flu killed 21 million people worldwide. So, Jauregg needed a fever that was predictable, controllable, and repeatable. Malaria fits right in. It had a 5-15% mortality rate, which is high, but better than almost certain death by syphilis. Also, once syphilis was cured, malaria could be neutralized by a medicine called quinine. There it began. Jauregg began injecting patients with a tiny dose of malaria, causing high fevers, and curing syphilis.

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However, as with everything, there were some issues. These were mainly ethical and psychological concerns, but serious concerns nonetheless. Remember, general paresis is a type of madness. Psychologically unstable people cannot give informed consent, but Jauregg proceeded anyway. This raises serious questions as to whether this was truly care or brutal experimentation. To add on to that, it also asks whether medical ethics can be ignored in moments of desperation.

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Despite all this, in 1927, Julius Wagner-Jauregg won the Nobel Prize for his discovery. This treatment led the medical world onto the path of inducing fevers (by safer means), amongst other things, to cure disease. As for malariotherapy, after the discovery of penicillin, which was both safe and effective, it fell out of practice.

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This story reminds me of a saying: Fight fire with fire (pun intended). Signing off for now.